part of the baseload power generation equation. The political issues associated with long term waste storage have yet to be resolved. Also a rejection of nuclear power means the acceptance of an alternative and its associated impacts such as black lung disease and air pollution for coal and the damming of wild rivers in the case of hydro. There are no easy choices left. Fusion, although the beneficiary of a long and reasonably well endowed research program, is still a long way from being engineered into a technology that can provide economical power. Once sustained energy break-even has been achieved it will still be sometime before the problems of utilizing that energy to produce power are solved. The difference between energy from space via wireless power transmission and fusion is that the first is technically doable now while the use of fusion to produce more energy than it consumes has not yet even been demonstrated in the laboratory. Other power technologies such as geothermal and ocean thermal energy' conversion (OTEC) offer the hope of being able to meet some of the demand. However wide spread expansion of geothermal energy will depend on being able to solve the problem of mineral contamination of the process water while OTEC systems will require either WPT or the development of a hydrogen energy economy for transmission to areas of demand. A major issue related to OTEC and which has not been addressed in any great depth is the environmental impact on the ocean's thermal gradients and circulation patterns. This brief review should point out that while parts of the solution to the world's energy needs already exist they all have problems which will limit their expansion. Additional sources of energy are needed. Because of the long lead times associated with capital intensive power projects new and emerging energy technologies must start to be implemented now. These new sources must be developed in cooperation with the people and businesses of the developing and third world countries who are the most in need of large amounts of high quality, reliable baseload energy. In summary we see that there are United Nations policy statements and initiatives which support the development of partnerships to stimulate local economic growth, there exists a definite need for new energy sources to supplement existing supplies, and that economics, environmental considerations, and geographical distribution of fossil fuels constrain their expansion to meet the total desired energy needs. At this point, we will describe the proposed technologies and then provide several system descriptions. The next issue to address: is there an economical, viable market for energy from space and are there structural mechanisms for introducing a new energy source?
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